Chapter 4

Patsy thanked them for both; but it was not until they were well out of earshot that she spoke to the tinker: "They are good folk, but they'd never understand in a thousand years how we came to be traveling along together. What folks don't know can't hurt them, and 'tis often easier holding your tongue than trying to explain what will never get through another's brain. Now put that lunch into your kit; it may come in handy--who knows? And God's blessing on all kind hearts!"

Whereupon the tinker nodded solemnly.

They had tramped for a mile or more when they came to a cross-roads marked by a little white church. From the moment they sighted it Patsy's feet began to lag; and by the time they reached the crossing of the ways she had stopped altogether and was gazing up at the little gold cross with an odd expression of whimsical earnestness.

"Do ye know," she said, slowly, clasping the hands long shorn of the vagabond gloves--"do ye know I've told so many lies these last two days I think I'll bide yonder for a bit, and see can Saint Anthony lift the sins from me. 'Twould make the rest o' the road less burdensome--don't ye think?"

The tinker looked uncomfortably confused, as though this sudden question of ethics or religion was too much for his scattered wits. He dug the toe of his boot in the gravel of the church path and removed his cap to aid the labor of his thinking. "Maybe--" he agreed at last. "An' will I be waitin' for you--or keepin' on?"

"Ye'll wait, of course," commanded Patsy.

She had barely disappeared through the little white door, and the tinker thrown himself down with his back to the sign-post which marked the roads, when a sorrel mare and a runabout came racing down the road over which they had just come. There were two men in the runabout, both of them tense and alert, their heads craned far in advance of the rest of them, their eyes scanning the diverging roads.

"I cal'ate she's gone that way." The driver swung the whip, indicating the road that ran south.

"Wall--I cal'ate so, too," agreed the other. "But then again--she mightn't."

They reined in and discovered the tinker. "Some one passed this way sence you been settin' there?" they inquired almost in unison.

"I don't know"--the tinker's fingers passed hurriedly across his eyes and forehead, by way of seeking misplaced wits--"some one might be almost any one," he smiled, cheerfully.

"Look here, young feller, if you're tryin' to be smart--" the driver began, angrily; but his companion silenced him with a nudge and a finger tapped significantly on the crown of his hat. He moderated his tone:

"We're after a girl in a brown suit and hat--undersized girl. She was asking the way to Arden. Seen any one of that description?"

"What do you want with her?"

"Never mind," growled the first man.

But the second volunteered meager information, "She's a suspect. Stayed last night in the Inn and this morning a couple of thousand dollars' worth of diamonds is missin'; that's what we want her for."

The tinker brightened perceptibly. "Guess she went by in a wagon half an hour ago--that way. I think I saw her," and as the men turned southward down the road marked Arden he called after them, "Better hurry, if you want to catch her; the wagon was going at a right smart pace."

He waited for their backs to be turned and for the crack of the whip that lifted the heels of the sorrel above the dashboard before she plunged, then, with amazing speed, of mind as well as of body, he wrenched every sign from the post and pitched them out of sight behind a neighboring stone wall.

The dust from departing wheels still filled the air when Patsy stepped out of the cross-roads church, peacefully radiant, and found the tinker sitting quietly with his back against the post.

"So ye are still here. I thought ye might have grown tired of my company, after all, and gone on." Patsy laughed happily. "Now do ye know which road goes to Arden?"

"Sure," and the tinker joined in her laugh, while he pointed to the straight road ahead, the road that ran west, at right angles to the one the runabout had taken.

"Come on, then," said Patsy; "we ought to be there by sundown." She stopped and looked him over for the space of a second. "Ye are improving wonderfully. Mind! ye mustn't be getting too keen-witted or we'll have to be parting company."

"Why?"

"That's the why!" And with this satisfactory explanation she led the way down the road the tinker had pointed.

VI

AT DAY'S END

Their road went the way of the setting sun, and Patsy and the tinker traveled it leisurely--after the fashion of those born to the road, who find their joy in the wandering, not in the making of a distance or the reaching of a destination. Since they had left the cross-roads church behind Patsy had marked the tinker casting furtive glances along the way they had come; and each time she marked, as well, the flash of a smile that lightened his face for an instant when he saw that the road still remained empty of aught but themselves.

"It's odd," she mused; "he hasn't the look of a knave who might fear a trailing of constables at his heels; and yet--and yet his wits have him pestered about something that lies back of him."

Once it was otherwise. There was a rising of dust showing on one of the hills they had climbed a good half-hour before. When the tinker saw it he reached of a sudden for Patsy's hand while he pointed excitedly beyond pasture bars ahead to a brownish field that lay some distance from the road.

"See, lass, that's sorrel. If you'll break the road along with me I'll show you where wild strawberries grow, lots of 'em!"

Her answer was to take the pasture bars at a run as easily as any country-bred urchin. The tinker swung himself after her, an odd wisp of a smile twisting the corners of his mouth, just such a smile as the fool might wear on the road to Arden. The two raced for the sorrel-tops--the tinker winning.

When Patsy caught up he was on his knees, his head bare, his eyes sparkling riotously, running his fingers exultantly through the green leaves that carpeted the ground. "See," he chuckled, "the tinker knows somethin' more 'n solder and pots."

Patsy's eyes danced. There they were--millions of the tiny red berries, as thick and luscious as if they had been planted in Elysian fields for Arcadian folk to gather. "The wee, bonnie things!" she laughed. "Now, how were ye afther knowing they were here?"

The tinker cocked his head wisely. "I know more 'n that; I know where to find yellow lady's-slippers 'n' the yewberries 'n' hummin'-bird nests."

She looked at him joyfully; he was turning out more and more to her liking. "Could ye be showing them to me, lad?" she asked.

The tinker eyed her bashfully. "Would you--care, then?"

"Sure, and I would;" and with that she was flat on the ground beside him, her fingers flying in search of strawberries.

So close they lay to the earth, so hidden by the waving sorrel and neighboring timothy, that had a whole county full of constables been abroad they could have passed within earshot and never seen them there.

With silence between them they ate until their lips were red and the cloud of dust on the hill back of them had whirled past, attendant on a sorrel mare and runabout. They ate until the road was quite empty once more; and then the tinker pulled Patsy to her feet by way of reminding her that Arden still lay beyond them.

"Do ye know," said Patsy, after another silence and they were once more afoot, "I'm a bit doubtful if the banished duke's daughter ever tasted anything half as sweet as those berries on her road to Arden; or, for that matter, if she found her fool half as wise. I'm mortial glad ye didn't fall off that stump this morning afore I came by to fetch ye off."

The tinker doffed his battered cap unexpectedly and swept her an astounding bow.

"Holy Saint Christopher!" ejaculated Patsy. "Ye'll be telling me ye know Willie Shakespeare next."

But the tinker answered with a blank stare, while the far-away, bewildered look of fear came back to his eyes. "Who's he? Does he live 'round here?" he asked, dully.

Patsy wrinkled a perplexed forehead. "Lad, lad, ye have me bursting with wonderment! Ye are a rare combination, even for an Irish tinker; but if ye are a fair sample of what they are over here, sure the States have the Old Country beaten entirely."

And the tinker laughed as he had laughed once before that day--the free, untrammeled laugh of youth, while he saucily mimicked her Irish brogue. "Sure, 'tis the road to Arden, ye were sayin', and anythin' at all can happen on the way."

The girl laughed with him. "And ye'll be telling me next that this is three hundred years ago, and romance and Willie Shakespeare are still alive." Her mind went racing back to the "once-upon-a-time days," the days when chivalry walked abroad--before it took up its permanent residence between the covers of story-books--when poets and saints, kings' sons and--tinkers journeyed afar to prove their manhood in deeds instead of inheritances; when it was no shame to live by one's wits or ask hospitality at any strange door. Ah--those were the days! And yet--and yet--could not those days be given back to the world again? And would not the world be made a merrier, sweeter place because of them? If Patsy could have had her way she would have gone forth at the ring of each new day like the angel in the folk tale, and with her shears cut the nets that bound humanity down to petty differences in creed or birth or tongue.

"Faith, it makes one sick," she thought. "We tell our children the tales of the Red Branch Knights--of King Arthur and the Knights of the Grail--and rejoice afresh over the beauty and wonder of them; we stand by the hour worshiping at the pictures of the saints--simple men and women who just went about doing kindness; and we read the Holy Book--the tales of Christ with his fishermen, wandering about, looking for some good deed to do, some helpfulness to give, some word of good cheer to speak; and we pray, 'Father, make us good--even as Thou wert.' And what does it all mean? We hurry through the streets afeared to stop on the corner and succor a stranger, or ashamed to speak a friendly word to a troubled soul in a tram-car; and we go home at night and lock our doors so that the beggar who asked for a bit of bread at noon can't come round after dark and steal the silver." Patsy sighed regretfully--if only this were olden times she would not be dreading to find Arden now and the man she was seeking there.

The tinker caught the sigh and looked over at her with a puzzled frown. "Tired?" he asked, laconically.

"Aye, a bit heart-tired," she agreed, "and I'm wishing Arden was still a good seven miles away."

Whereupon the tinker turned his head and grinned sheepishly toward the south.

* * * * *

The far-away hills had gathered in the last of the sun unto themselves when the two turned down the main street of a village. It was unquestionably a self-respecting village. The well-tarred sidewalks, the freshly painted meeting-house neighboring the engine-house "No. 1," the homes with their well-mowed lawns in front and the tidily kept yards behind--all spoke of a decency and lawfulness that might easily have set the hearts of the most righteous of vagabonds a-quaking.

Patsy looked it carefully over. "Sure, Arden's no name for it at all. They'd better have called it Gospel Center--or New Canaan. 'Twould be a grand place, though, to shut in all the Wilfred Peterson-Joneses, to keep them off the county's nerves--and the rich men's sons, to keep them off the public sympathy. But 'tis no place for us, lad."

The tinker shifted his kit from one shoulder to the other and held his tongue.

Their entrance was what Patsy might have termed "fit." The dogs of the village were on hand; that self-appointed escort of all doubtful characters barked them down the street with a lusty chorus of growls and snarls and sharp, staccato yaps. There were the children, too, of course; the older ones followed hot-foot after the dogs; the smaller ones came, a stumbling vanguard, sucking speculative thumbs or forefingers, as the choice might be. The hurly-burly brought the grown-ups to windows and doors.

"'Hark! hark! the dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town,'" quoted Patsy, with a grim little smile, and glanced across at the tinker. He was blushing fiercely. "Never mind, lad. 'Tis better being barked into a town than bitten out of it."

For answer the tinker stopped and folded his arms sullenly. "I'm not such a fool I can't feel somethin'. Don't you reckon I know the shame it is to be keepin' a decent woman company with these rags--and no wits?"

"If I've not misplaced my memory, 'twas myself that chose the company, and 'twas largely on account of those very things, I'm thinking. Do ye guess for a minute that if ye had been a rich man's son in grand clothes--and manners to match--I'd ever have tramped a millimeter with ye?" She smiled coaxingly. "Faith! there's naught the matter with those rags; a king's son might be proud o' them. As for foolishness, I've known worse faults in a man."

The tinker winced imperceptibly, and all unconsciously Patsy went on: "'Tis the heart of a man that measures him, after all, and not the wits that crowd his brain or the gold that lines his pockets. Oh, what do the folks who sit snug by their warm hearthsides, knitting their lives into comfortables to wrap around their real feelings and human impulses, ever know about their neighbors who come in to drink tea with them? And what do the neighbors in turn know about them? If I had my way, I'd tumble the whole sit-by-the-fire-and-gossip world out of doors and set them tramping the road to somewhere; 'tis the surest way of getting them acquainted with themselves and the neighbors. For that matter, all of us need it--just once in so often. And so--to the road, say I, with a fair greeting to all alike, be they king's son or beggar, for the road may prove the one's the other afore the journey's done."

"Amen!" said the tinker, devoutly, and Patsy laughed.

They had stopped in the middle of the street, midway between the church and the engine-house, Patsy so absorbed in her theories, the tinker so absorbed in Patsy, that neither was aware of the changed disposition of their circling escort until a cold, inquisitive nose and a warm, friendly tongue brought them to themselves. Greetings were returned in kind; heads were patted, backs stroked, ears scratched--only the children stood aloof and unconvinced. That is ever the way of it; it is the dogs who can better tell glorious vagabondage from inglorious rascality.

"Sure, ye can't fool dogs; I'd be taking the word of a dog before a man's anywhere when it comes to judging human beings." Patsy looked over her shoulder at the children. "Ye have the creatures won over entirely; 'tis myself might try what I could do with the wee ones. If we had the dogs and the childther to say a good word for us--faith! the grown-ups might forget how terribly respectable they were and make us welcome for one night." A sudden thought caught her memory. "I was almost forgetting why I had come. Hunt up a shop for me, lad, will ye? There must be one down the street a bit; and if ye'll loan me some of that half-crown the good man paid for your tinkering, I'd like to be having a New York News--if they have one--along with the fixings for a letter I have to be writing. While ye are gone I'll bewitch the childther."

And she did.

When the tinker returned she was sitting on the church steps, the children huddled so close about her that she was barely distinguishable in the encircling mass of shingled heads, bobby curls, pigtails and hair-ribbons. Deaf little ears were being turned to parental calls for supper--a state of affairs unprecedented and unbelievable; while Patsy was bringing to an end the tale of Jack, the Irish hero of a thousand and one adventures.

"And he married the king's daughter--and they lived happier than ye can tell me--and twice as happy as I can tell ye--in a castle that had a window for every day in the year."

"That would make a fine endin' for any lad's story," said the tinker, soberly. "'A window for every day in the year' would mean a whole lot of cheerfulness and sunshine, wouldn't it?"

Patsy nodded. "But don't those who take to the road fetch that castle along with them? Sure, there it is"--and her hand swept toward the skyline an encompassing circle about them--"with the sun flooding it from dawn to day's end." She turned to the eager faces about her, waiting for more. "Are ye still there? Faith! what have I been hearing this half-hour but hungry childther being called for tea. 'Twas 'Joseph' from the house across the way, and 'Rebecca' from off yonder, and 'Susie May' from somewhere else. Away with yez all to your mothers!" And Patsy scattered them as if they had been a flock of young sheep, scampering helter-skelter in all directions.

But one there was who lagged behind, a little boy with an old, old face, who watched the others go and then crept closer, held by the spell of the tale. He pulled at Patsy's sleeve to gain attention. "I'm--I'm Joseph. Was it true--most of it?"

She nodded a reply as solemn as his question, "Aye, as true as youth and the world itself."

"And would it come true for another boy--any boy--who went a-tramping off like that? Would he find--whatever he was wishin' for?" And even as he spoke his eyes left hers and went searching for the far-away hills--and what might lie beyond.

"Come here, little lad." Patsy drew him to her and put two steadying hands on his shoulders. She knew that he, too, had heard the call of the road and the longing to be gone--to be one with it, journeying to meet the mysterious unknown--was upon him. "Hearken to me: 'Tis only safe for a little lad to be going when he has three things to fetch with him--the wish to find something worth the bringing home, the knowledge of what makes good company along the way, and trust in himself. When ye are sure of these, go; but ye'll no longer be a little lad, I'm thinking. And remember first to get the mother's blessing and 'God-speed,' same as Jack; a lad's journey ends nowhere that begins without that."

He went without a word, but content; and his eyes brimmed with visions.

Patsy watched him tenderly. "Who knows--he may find greatness on his road. Who knows?"

The tinker dropped the bundle he had brought back from the store into her lap, but she scarcely heeded him. Her eyes were looking out into the gathering dusk while her voice sank almost to a whisper.

"_Ochone!_ but I've always envied that piper fellow from Hamelin town. Think of being able to gather up all the childther hereabouts, eager, hungry-hearted childther with mothers too busy or deaf to heed them, and leading them away to find their fortunes! Wouldn't that be wonderful, just?"

"What kind of fortunes?" asked the tinker.

"What but the best kind!" Patsy thought for a moment, and smiled whimsically while her eyes grew strangely starry in that early twilight. "Wouldn't I like to be choosing those fortunes, and wouldn't they be an odd lot, entirely! There'd be singing hearts that had learned to sing above trouble; there'd be true fellowship--the kind that finds brotherhood in beggars as well as--as prime ministers; there'd be peace of soul--not the kind that naps by the fire, content that the wind doesn't be blowing down his chimney, but the kind that fights above fighting and keeps neighbor from harrying neighbor. Troth, the world is in mortial need of fortunes like the last."

"And wouldn't you be choosin' gold for a fortune?" asked the tinker.

Patsy shook her head vehemently.

"Why not?"

"That's the why!" Suddenly Patsy clenched her hands and shook two menacing fists against the gathering dark. "I hate gold, along with the meanness and the lying and the thieving and the false judgment it brings into the world."

"But the world can't get along without it," reminded the tinker, shrewdly.

"Aye, but it can. It can get along without the hoarded gold, the inherited gold, the cheating, bribing, starving gold--that's the kind I mean, the kind that gets into a man's heart and veins until his fingers itch to gild everything he touches, like the rich man in the city yonder."

"What rich man? I thought the--I thought the city was full o' rich men."

"Maybe; but there's just one I'm thinking of now; and God pity him--and his son."

The tinker eyed her stupidly. "How d'you know he has a son?"

Patsy laughed. "I guessed--maybe." Then she looked down in her lap. "And here's the news--with no light left to read it by; and I'm as hungry as an alley cat--and as tired as two. Ye'd never dream, to hear me talking, that I'd never had much more than a crooked sixpence to my name since I was born; and here I am, with that gone and not a slither to buy me bed or board for the night."

The tinker looked down at her with an altogether strange expression, very different from anything Patsy had seen on his face all day. Had she chanced to catch it before it flickered out, it might have puzzled even her O'Connell wits to fathom the meaning of it. For it was as if the two had unexpectedly changed places, and the tender pity and protectiveness that had belonged to her had suddenly become his.

"Never mind, lass; there's board in the kit for to-night--what the farm wife put up; and there's this left, and I'll--I'll--" He did not finish; instead he dropped a few coins in her hand, the change from the half-dollar. Then he set about sweeping the dust from the step with his battered cap and spreading their meager meal before her.

They ate in silence, so deep in the business of dulling their appetites that they never noticed a small figure crossing the street with two goblets and a pitcher hugged tight in his arms. They never looked up until the things were set down beside them and a voice announced at their elbow, "Mother said I could bring it; it's better 'n eatin' dry."

It was Joseph; and the pitcher held milk, still foamy from a late milking. He looked at Patsy a moment longingly, as if there was more he wanted to ask; but, overcome with a sudden bashful confusion, he took to his heels and disappeared around the corner of the meeting-house before they had time even to give thanks.

The tinker poured the goblets full, handed Patsy's to her with another grave bow, and, touching his to hers, said, soberly, "Here's to a friendly lass--the first I ever knew, I reckon."

For an instant she watched him, puzzled and amused; then she raised her glass slowly in reply. "And here's to tinkers--the world over!"

When everything but the crumbs were eaten she left him to scatter these and return Joseph's pitcher while she went to get "the loan of a light from the shopkeeper, and hunt up the news."

* * * * *

The store was store, post-office, and general news center combined. The news was at that very moment in process of circulation among the "boys"--a shirt-sleeved quorum from the patriarchs of the town circling the molasses-keg--the storekeeper himself topped it. They looked up as Patsy entered and acknowledged her "Good evening" with that perfect indifference, the provincial cloak in habitual use for concealing the most absolute curiosity. The storekeeper graciously laid the hospitality of his stool and counter and kerosene-lamp at her feet; in other words, he "cal'ated she was welcome to make herself t' home." All of which Patsy accepted. She spread out the newspaper on the counter in front of her; she unwrapped a series of small bundles--ink, pen, stamped envelope, letter-pad, and pen-holder, and eyed them with approval.